


you must be this tall to fight

by hoye



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27721073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoye/pseuds/hoye
Summary: A mercenary, a kid in a school uniform, and a group of Alpha Males walk into a donut shop.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Wade Wilson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 199





	you must be this tall to fight

**Author's Note:**

> yet another random one shot i found in my draft dumps :-) i was thinking wade and five would be pretty good friends all things considered

Wade Winston Wilson has met a lot of strange people in his thirty-three years on Earth, himself included, but he figures that’s just a part of the super-(not exactly)-hero life. 

_What’s your superpower then?_ White taunts. _Annoying people to death?_

 _I think it’s just being a straight-up asshole,_ Yellow says innocently.

_Shut up! We’re getting off topic and we’re less than 100 words in!_

Right, back to the story.

The kid is definitely one of Wade’s weirdest encounters.

He happens to meet him in a run-down donut shop, one he wouldn’t voluntarily go into, but he’s already been stabbed at least seven times tonight, and he’s not willing to risk an eighth just to eat at his favorite taco stand (the owner is easily upset over little things, like her livelihood being accidentally set on fire; she’s already stabbed him thrice in the past, at least twice on purpose).

Wade’s seated at the counter, waiting for the sweet old lady who’s working the night shift to come back from the kitchen, when the bell above the door jangles and the kid walks in.

He’s probably twelve or thirteen years old and is wearing what must be a private school uniform. His jacket is neat, his boy shorts perfectly creased, and his loafers shine. His hair is immaculately coiffed as well.

Wade debates reaching out and pinching his cheeks.

 _Aw, he’s adorable,_ Yellow coos.

 _Don’t do anything I would do,_ White points out.

_Yeah, yeah. I don’t murder kids, it’s not an issue._

The kid takes a seat right next to Wade, which speaks to either the absolute Gen-Z mentality this kid has or the fact that he has no idea who Wade is, despite him wearing his signature outfit.

_Should I be offended?_

_He thinks he’s special,_ White scoffs to Yellow.

The lady returns, smoothing the wrinkles in her outdated pink uniform. Her name tag reads “Agnes” and she has a kindness to her that Wade feels like he rarely ever sees anymore.

“What can I get you?” she asks, turning to Wade.

“I’d like a dozen tacos,” he says cheerfully.

She looks at him in confusion. “I’m sorry, but this–, this is a donut shop.”

“Ah, well, it was worth a shot,” he shrugs. “How about a dozen donuts then? With pink sprinkles!”

She smiles warmly. “That, I can do. And for the kid?” She gestures with her pen.

Wade opens his mouth to ask what exactly makes her think the kid is with him, because he’s got two swords strapped to his back and is sitting in a donut shop wearing what basically amounts to a leather body-condom. Nothing about him speaks to being a father, uncle, or any type of person who regularly spends time near children at all.

The boy speaks before he can. “The _kid_ will have a coffee. Black.” He grins, all teeth.

 _That’s pretty fucking weird,_ White comments, ever the suspicious one. 

_Maybe he’s a cryptid!_ Yellow shouts.

“Cute kid,” the woman remarks. “I’ll be right back with your order.” She disappears once more into the kitchen. 

Wade turns to face his late-night ~~taco~~ donut companion. “You’re too short to be drinking coffee, kid.”

The boy raises an eyebrow. “Not a kid,” he says first. Then, after some thought, “Don’t you mean too young?”

“Nah, no one’s ever too young to do anything. But shortness, that’s what’ll get you,” Wade says with an affected air of wisdom. “Must be this tall to ride and all that.” He waves a hand horizontally, measuring roughly five feet off the ground. 

The kid looks amused and snobby at the same time, totally in character with his preppy rich-parents-spoiled-me-rotten aesthetic. “Never had someone use my height against me. More often it’s my age that’s the issue.”

“That’s discrimination — you should totally sue,” Wade comments.

Despite his weird request for black coffee and his weird clothes and how weirdly late it is for a kid to be out on his own (or at least Wade thinks it’s probably late for kids to be out? — he’s not an expert), the kid doesn’t set off any of Wade’s typical “you’re in danger” alarms (which is basically just White insisting he shoot first and ask never), which ultimately convinces him that the weird kid is probably _just_ a weird kid.

The boy snorts. “You’re discriminating against me because of my height, so maybe I should sue you then.”

“That’s different!”

“How so?”

“It’s playful banter between friends!”

The kid rolls his eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “We’ve only just met,” he points out, but there’s a weird carefulness about it, like he’s lying.

_Why would he lie about the truth?_

“Amazing how time flies, isn’t it?” Wade says.

Something flickers across the kid’s face, dark and angry, before it disappears. “And aren’t you too old to be making friends with teenagers?” he continues with too lighthearted of a tone.

Wade gasps, hand to his heart, his mind still thinking about the way the kid’s entire face had changed in an instant. “Who’s using age against who now!”

The kid snorts again, the smile on his face growing microscopically bigger, as Agnes returns, box of donuts in one hand, steaming mug of liquid bitterness in the other.

“Here you are,” she says kindly, setting the food and drink down. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Not unless you happened to find any tacos while you were back there.”

She shakes her head. “‘Fraid not.”

“Then it’s all gravy, baby,” Wade says with a thumbs-up. He flips open the box of donuts and offers one to the kid, who takes it after a moment of deliberation. Agnes smiles at the exchange and then walks off again, most likely preparing to close the place soon.

When she's out of sight, Wade rolls up the bottom of his mask so he can dig into his late-night snack.

“Never met a child who’s not a fan of sugar,” Wade says through a mouthful of pink-sprinkled deliciousness, waiting for any kind of reaction from the kid, now that he could see the scarred, raw skin of Wade’s chin.

The kid doesn’t even bat an eye, just passes a napkin from the dispenser so that Wade can wipe the icing off of his mouth.

_Huh. Maybe it’s the Gen-Z in him._

_Or he’s here to kill you,_ White says.

 _You just sprayed the kid with a shower of donut crumbs,_ Yellow adds.

“Whoops!”

_You did it again._

“Sorry, I should stop talking with my mouth full.”

“When do you ever,” the kid says wryly, as if he’s already well-acquainted with Wade’s habits. He’s placed the gifted donut on top of another napkin untouched, but he’s already downed about half of the coffee. “And I liked sugar more when I was a kid.” He gestures around them. “Used to sneak out with my siblings to come down here and eat what we weren’t allowed to, but man, this place has become a dump since my day.”

 _He talks like he’s older,_ Yellow notices. _Like, 45 years older._

“You talk like you’re an old man,” Wade says. “Forty-five years too old,” he adds, thinking about what Yellow said.

The kid gives him an odd look, but shrugs it off and turns his attention back to his coffee.

The bell above the door rings.

Both Wade and the kid turn back to look at a group of heavily-armed muscleheads, decked out in bulletproof armor and wielding machine guns.

“Uh, what? I didn’t even _do_ anything today, let alone un-alive somebody.” _Lie._ “Who the heck are you guys?” he complains as he yanks his mask back down.

They ignore Wade, surprisingly, and the one in the front, clearly the leader of their pack of alpha males, steps forward.

“The Handler isn’t too happy with your disappearing act,” Alpha Male says calmly.

“I can’t imagine why,” the boy responds. His fingers are slowly making their way to the utensils lying in front of him. “She should’ve expected as much.”

Wade watches the exchange with wide eyes. “What is happening right now?”

Everyone ignores him, again.

“You have ten seconds to leave with us,” Alpha Male says.

“And if I refuse?” 

Alpha Male’s eyes take in Wade, all six feet and some inches of him, sitting right next to the kid. “People are going to get hurt.”

“Woah, that almost sounds like a threat,” Wade says, “and I’m not a huge fan of those.” He takes a knife out of his belt and stabs it into the counter, as one casually does, to punctuate the end of his sentence.

The kid smirks and Alpha Male scowls. “Fuck off,” he says, before lifting his gun and shooting Wade precisely three times in the stomach.

“Well, now I’m just upset,” Wade says, calmly, but in the dangerous way that he only ever is when he’s out on the job. As the bullet wounds heal, he removes his knife from the counter between his pointer and middle fingers before demonstrating the basic level of skill that any decent mercenary should have, by immediately flinging it across the room.

Random Henchman #6 drops to the floor, knife embedded to the hilt in the middle of his forehead. 

“That’s my cue,” the kid stands, utensil in hand, and _disappears in a flash of blue light._

The kid immediately reappears in front of Alpha Male and replaces his eyeball with a rusty butter knife. Alpha Male screams out in pain and his henchmen turn to shoot the kid, but not fast enough, because he’s gone in another flash of blue.

The rest of the henchmen shout and start to wave their guns as they try to track his not-visible moments.

“What the fuck!” Wade screams.

They begin firing aimlessly, hitting Wade a few times before he manages to throw himself behind the counter. He pulls out three more knives, hurls them over the counter with deadly precision — three more henchmen drop like flies — and then pulls his gun out of his front pocket.

“I’m just happy to see you,” he says coyly, before shooting two more.

Meanwhile, the kid is popping in and out all over the place, waving with a cocky grin, misdirecting most of the henchmen’s bullets into one another instead of into him, doing as little work as possible while still inflicting the most damage.

 _He’s actually_ good _,_ Yellow says, a little in awe.

 _He’s alright_ , White says, begrudgingly.

 _He’s too short to be fighting this fight_ , Wade thinks.

The last henchman to die is personally strangled by the kid with a little assistance from his uniform tie.

“Oh man,” Wade says, looking around, “what are we going to tell Agnes?”

What’s remaining of the donut shop is in shambles, most of the fluorescent light bulbs having been shot to hell and the remaining three are flickering feebly. All of the glass in the building is riddled with bullet holes and there’s an impressive amount of blood pooling on the floor, not to mention the dozen dead bodies lying about.

The kid looks at him funny. “Who’s Agnes?”

“My great-grandmother,” Wade replies, “and also the lady hiding in the kitchen right now.”

“Ah,” the kid says, pulling his tie off of the strangled henchman’s neck, “she’ll just have to accept that life isn’t fair.”

Sitting back down at the counter, the kid drains the rest of his coffee before extending a hand toward Wade. “Knife,” he demands, wriggling his fingers.

Wade raises an eyebrow, the motion visible through his mask. “What makes you think I have a knife?”

“Because you always do. Knife.”

Wade focuses on the kid’s answer. _Because you always do_. Have they met before? “You gonna stab me, kid?”

The kid scowls. “Not a kid,” he snaps. “And no. Knife, now.”

 _He’s definitely going to stab you,_ White says, ever the pessimist.

 _But like, what’s the worst he can do? Stab you? You’ve lived through worse,_ Yellow points out.

“I’m gonna have to go with Yellow on this one, White,” Wade says as he pulls out yet another knife and hands it to the not-kid.

The not-kid doesn’t even blink at Wade talking to the boxes, working instead to pull up his sleeve. He cuts deeply, length-wise, into his forearm.

“Alright, want to explain your process to the class? Because what the fuck.”

“Can you just shut up for a moment,” the not-kid grits out as he begins to _dig into his open wound._

“Oh my god, I’m going to be sick. I am going to _barf_ inside my mask and the smell is never going to come out,” Wade says, putting a hand over his masked mouth.

The not-kid shoots him a glare. “You just got shot and recovered from it in seconds and _this_ is what’s going to make you vomit? You need to grow up, brat.”

Wade cocks his head to the side. “Aren’t you the brat here? Also, are we just going to ignore the fact that you are way too short to be fighting like, like _that_.” Wade gestures wildly to the dead bodies.

The brat snorts. “Still talking about my height, huh?”

“Well, yeah. Age is but a number, but height is everything.”

“Height’s a number, too.”

“Maybe,” Wade replies. The brat grunts and then with a muffled, pained gasp produces a blinking red tracker from his arm.

“Shit,” Wade says. “What’ve you gotten yourself into, kid?”

“ _Not_ a kid,” the kid says again, annoyed. He brushes his bloody fingers against his blazer and scrutinizes the tracker from different angles.

“Got a name then?”

“Mmm, Mom said I should never talk to strangers.”

“Really?”

The kid snorts. “No.” He drops the tracker and crushes it under his foot. “You can call me Five.”

“Well, if we’re all about sharing now, I’m Deadpool, the Merc with the Mouth! You’ve probably heard about my various exploits, which include bothering the Avengers, un-aliving people, and eating the most tacos in NYC. I am the most handsome man on Earth and the biggest Golden Girls fan, no competition. I like long walks to the nearest taco truck, when the weather is nice enough to go out for tacos, and—”

“I know who you are, Wade,” Five says tiredly, cutting off Wade’s manic introduction.

_That is NOT public knowledge._

“How do you know my name?” As a general rule, Wade doesn’t kill kids, but this particular kid comes with some kind of teleportation-based superpower and is also well-learned in the art of killing. He unsheathes one of his katanas just in case. 

“You told it to me,” Five says, scowling at the blade. 

“I don’t tell anyone my name,” Wade responds. “I am Deadpool when I put the leather condom on, and I don’t ever take it off, you know?” 

“ **Don’t be a fool, cover your tool** ,” Wade and Five say in unison.

“Woah, how’d you do that?”

“You say it so often, how could I possibly not know what was coming next,” Five grouches.

“I’ve never met you before in my life,” Wade responds. “And I’ll be the first to admit I’m not so hot with the names and the faces, but I think I’d remember a Gen-Z assassin.”

“Technically, I’m a Millennial,” Five says back as he starts wrapping his profusely bleeding arm with his own torn off shirt sleeve.

“What? But I’m a Millennial.”

Five smirks. “I’m older than I look.”

Wade taps a finger to his chin in mock contemplation. “Private school outfit, weird way of talking, trained killer who _knows_ my _name_. Who do you work for?”

“I’d tell you, but then—”

“You’d have to kill me,” Wade finishes. “I think you’ll find that to be an impossible task. Many have tried, myself included, and all have failed!”

Five finishes bandaging his arm. “So you think you can’t die?” he says neutrally.

“I know I can’t die,” Wade says, suspicious. “How do you know my name but not about my healing factor?”

He takes the abandoned knife from the counter and promptly stabs himself in the heart. Five, interestingly enough, doesn’t flinch or react like any normal person would.

“Jesus Christ, Wade, really?”

 _He’s weird, I don’t like it,_ White says immediately.

 _You don’t like anyone,_ Yellow says.

“He is really weird,” Wade agrees, pulling the knife out with an unnoticeable wince. He doesn’t die, because his organs knit themselves back together faster than he can bleed out and stop functioning. Not that it would matter either way, because Death would just send him right back, good as new. Good as old? 

“I know about the healing,” Five says, “but that doesn’t have to do with dying.”

“Uh, did I miss something?”

“If the world ends in ten days, how long do you think you’ll make it?”

_That’s a non sequitur._

“Forever, probably? What part of ‘I don’t die’ is too hard for you to get?”

“You _can_ die. Permanently even.” Five’s delivery sends a chill down Wade’s spine. “I’ve seen it happen.”

“Back the fuck up, what? What?! _WHAT?!_ What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s a long story,” Five says, scrubbing his face with his palm. “Maybe even longer than it takes you to talk about that time you were in Omaha.”

 _How does he know about Omaha,_ White yells. _We said we weren’t going to tell anyone about that!_

“Humor me,” Wade says.

“Not here though,” Five stands up. “I’m already compromised here.” He looks pointedly at the crushed tracker.

“Then where else?”

“You ever been inside the Umbrella Academy?”

_Oh, shit. What kind of fuckery are you getting into now?_

“Nope, but I’ve tried to break in once a couple years ago. Big guy — really jacked, angry expression — kicked me out.”

“Of course he did,” Five mutters before letting out a long-suffering sigh. “C’mon, Wade. Let me tell you about the Apocalypse.”

Five reaches out and grabs Wade by the arm, yanking him into yet another blue-tinged spatial anomaly and leaving the donut shop behind.

The lights flicker feebly, an eerie silence taking over the dim-lit building.

Agnes Rofa peers over the counter, her fingers trembling horribly, as she takes in the murdered assassins in black and the bullet holes decorating the walls and windows.

“Oh dear,” she says, her voice shaking too. “I really should get paid better for working the night shift.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :-)
> 
> you can come find me on [tumblr](https://www.13tongues.tumblr.com)!


End file.
